Architecture of the Land: entering the garden works of Ron Benner Miriam Jordan and Julian Haladyn
t he first thing that caught our attention when we encountered Ron Benner’s garden installations was the smell of vitality emanating from the work which uses live, growing, indigenous plant life. Most contemporary agricultural products are bred strictly with profit in mind, maximizing the lifespan of perishable goods at the expense of smell and taste and focussing on the plant as commodity, eliding the people and communities that foster such growth. Benner, in his work, is actively refuting such schisms between land, food and people; his work both physically and conceptually links its viewers to the very structure and value of the land. With elaborately beautiful garden installations Benner draws attention to this invisible architecture that surrounds and sustains the cultivation of agricultural production, as well as pointing out the dangers of ignoring or even dismantling such age-old structures. The agriculture practices that Benner is working with are grounded in the traditions of indigenous peoples all over the world; it is one that views plant life as an integrated component in the welfare of social structure, a structure that he visually represents in architectural terms using the stature of the plants he chooses. Benner’s practice of installing his garden installations in public spaces — such as All That Has Value (1993) which was installed at Harbourfront in Toronto for a number of years — makes his work accessible to the public, forging a relationship between his artworks and people who interact with them. One of our first experiences with Benner’s practice was through his garden Trans/mission: Corn Vectors (1996-7) on the campus of the Univer- sity of Western Ontario: four wall-like billboards with black and white photographs Benner took while studying indigenous agricultural prac- tices throughout the world. These billboards are framed by various plants native to the Americas, the most visually prominent being the large stalks of corn that tower over the images. The use of corn plants, specifically Purple Peruvian and Gaspé Flint maize, is what gives the gardens their most architectural quality, especially in relation to the inferred architecture of the billboards and the literal architecture of the surrounding buildings. Later that fall Benner held a gathering in which people were invited to share in the corn that was harvested from the work and cooked on location; it is in these types of community interactions that Bennerís work can be most fully appreciated.
As Benner himself states, these billboard or garden installations “have provided me with an immediate response from viewers. I find this very gratifying, even when the responses are negative. This activity encour- ages dialogue versus didacticism” (129). The dialogue that Benner creates is often political in nature, focusing upon issues of colonialism that he addresses in and through his work. The stable architectonic manner in which the stalks of corn are used in Benner’s work makes an obvious connection between the land and the food, a connection that is then linked to the community of people who come to share the harvest. Such a communal understanding of food-bearing plant life should be viewed as purposely contrasting the typical manner in which many people in Western society experience the products they con- sume: stripped of any visible relationship to the land, often wrapped in plastic and displayed on a piece of Styrofoam. Benner’s installations reveal a vital network of human relations centered around the cultiva- tion and consumption of agricultural plants — plants that are the transient architecture for human subsistence. It is a pleasant shock to the senses to be immersed in the living enclave of indigenous plant life that Benner brings together and shares with the people who enter the space of his work. With his recent installation Trans/Mission: Still Life (2004)— located at Grosvenor Lodge in London, along with his recently transplanted All That Has Value — Benner forms a more acute relationship between ag- ricultural plants and architecture. We were physically invited into the space of this work through a corridor created by two rows of plants, each bed surrounding two lattice work billboards with photographs mounted on them; Purple Peruvian maize towered over us as we walked through the row. The smell and sense of life grew as we stood inside this architectural structure made of growing plants. These works are never static and are always in the process of becoming: they are alive. Their visceral qualities are the direct result of the connection between land, food and people into which Benner taps, a connection that he believes is vital for the continued existence of the human race. Benner’s garden installations make visible the architecture inherent in the land. c Benner, Ron. ‘An Answer to a Question’ So, to Speak . Ed. Jean-Pierre Gilbert, Sylvie Gilbert, Lesley Johnstone. Montreal: Artextes Editions, 1999. pp 129-130
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